A Brief Introduction

1. Widespread mass advocacy with accurate and thorough information. We pursue
this via the distribution of Why Vegan, Vegetarian Living,
and the Vegan Starter Pack.

2. Support of positive, healthy veganism; specifically, the presentation of
balanced, detailed, and current nutritional information, compiled and frequently
updated by Jack Norris, RD, co-founder and President of Vegan Outreach.

One of the purposes of Vegan Spam is to keep interested people up-to-date concerning
both these areas.

Currently, Vegan Outreach has over 8,000 members in the US and many other countries.
Last year, we sent out over 500,000 copies of Why Vegan and Vegetarian
Living; every week, we fill requests for hundreds of copies of our Vegan
Starter Packs. With the continued support and efforts of compassionate, dedicated
people, we will continue to increase our reach and impact.

Updates

The Latest Print Newsletter...

3rd Leaflet Your Local School Day

Update: Activists have signed up to leaflet 31 colleges and
21 high schools. You can sign
up today!

Please note: Give
Direct is a new way to donate to Vegan Outreach online to support projects
like Leaflet Your Local School Day or donate for other
materials. Give Direct allows you to set up automatic monthly or quarterly
donations as well. Visit our donation
page to learn more.

New Program to Mail Why Vegan? to College Students

Vegan Outreach is conducting an experiment which we hope will bear great fruit.
In addition to supplying booklets and sponsoring Leaflet Your Local School Day,
we have decided to speed things up by sending a Why Vegan to every
student at a particular college. The first college, to be named later, has about
2400 undergraduate students. The entire cost of the project will be $600.

If you would like to sponsor a program like this for a school, please email
Jack Norris.

My students and I would like to thank you very much
for your very prompt and generous response. Your brochures have had a very
sobering effect on all who've had the chance to examine them. Although my
purpose is to teach my class how to communicate effectively through the written
word, there's no denying the truth of the maxim that a picture says a thousand
words. Please also accept our gratitude for your very worthwhile
endeavors. Hopefully, we'll be able to change some attitudes toward animals
in this part of the country.RM, San Fernando High School, San Fernando, CA, 2/8/03

Email from several members:

Joe Espinosa and Marsha Forsman, Chicago, IL

Here is our January report:

1/4/03 301 copies of Why Vegan on Michigan Avenue

1/4/03 50 copies WV at Vegetarian Express Restaurant

1/6/03 62 copies WV at Chicago Diner Restaurant

1/13/03 75 copies WV at Chicago Diner

1/27/03 80 copies WV at Chicago Diner

1/30/03 50 copies WV at Vegetarian Express

1/31/03 321 copies WV at U of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Lori Peterson, Esq., Minneapolis, MN, February 7, 2003

We handed out 2700 pieces of animal rights literature in ONE HOUR tonite in
Minneapolis.

"Acquire the Fire" is a Christian music deal that travels the country
and you should check their website, as they are coming to a city near you. Thousands
of open-minded young people come to hear them everywhere they go.

We ran out of materials and will go back tomorrow night to catch the outgoing
crowd. I'm thinking it's better to hit them on their way out, as we got some
idiots from the group telling people on their way in to not read it.

Anyway, half of the materials were What
Would Jesus Eat … Today? and half were Why Vegan. We
were handing them out so fast it was amazing. Busloads of students kept arriving.
They were mostly very polite and everyone (almost) wanted a brochure.

February 9, 2003
We handed out about 100 fliers at the Indigo Girls concert tonight and then
another 900 at the Acquire the Fire event.

PLEASE consider getting volunteers to ALL of these types of events...very polite
crowds... but you'll need plenty of people at each entrance/exit, as the busloads
will overwhelm you.

Cholesterol Levels of Vegans

-Jack Norris, RD

Vegan advocates rightly point out that vegans’ cholesterol levels are
lower than lacto-ovo vegetarians and non-vegetarians. But how much lower are
they?

One can do an Internet search and find many
sites listing the cholesterol levels of vegan’s in the U.S. as 128
mg/dl. That is quite low and somewhat surprising based on various studies I
had seen over the years. So, I decided to look up all the studies measuring
the cholesterol levels of vegans since about 1980.

U.S. Vegans
It turns out that in the 5 studies found since 1980 on U.S. vegans, not one
showed them to have an average cholesterol level as low as 128 mg/dl. The lowest
average in any study was 135 mg/dl. Additionally, cholesterol was measured in
only 135 vegans, which is not a particularly large number and does not support
much confidence in characterizing “U.S. vegans” as a whole. The
data from all 5 studies showed the following averages:

Diet

Number of People

Total Cholesterol (mg/dl)

Vegan

135

146.4

Lacto-ovo Vegetarian

174

177.3

Non-vegetarian

117

194.2

All Western Vegans
The average cholesterol levels of vegans living in Western countries in 17 studies
since 1978, including the U.S. vegans listed above, showed the following:

Diet

Number of People

Total Cholesterol (mg/dl)

Vegan

749

160.0

Lacto-ovo Vegetarian

2,135

185.3

Fish-eaters

467

196.2

Non-vegetarian

1,857

201.5

This is a decent number of vegans and, in my opinion, does provide confidence
in being representative of vegans in general. As you can see, vegans averaged
a good 40 points below non-vegetarians.

While that definitely is something to write home about, does this mean that
vegans have lower rates of heart disease, and they are off the hook? Not so
fast...

A lack of attention to vitamin
B12 and omega-3
fats may counteract benefits of a vegan diet (see Current
State of Vegan Health). At this point, not enough data has been collected
to fully understand how all these variables come together. In the meantime,
it only takes a little effort to get B12 and increase your omega-3 status, and
you can reap the benefits of a vegan diet without suffering any known drawbacks.

Of course, it is possible to eat a vegan diet filled with junk food, hydrogenated
oils, and few fruits and vegetables. This sort of vegan diet might not provide
the benefits seen in the studies compiled above.

Finally, some people have a strong genetic predisposition to high cholesterol.
The College of American Pathologists recommends
that people over the age of 20 have their cholesterol levels checked every 5
years.